Chef carves out reputation in ice
Instructor teaches & sculpts full-time
Under a tent on a recent rainy afternoon, a 20-degree, 300-pound block of ice shed half its weight in less than 45 minutes. In the process, it became a swan.
It used to take Steven Leake three hours to sculpt ice like this. He couldn’t always finesse a chainsaw like a chef’s knife. A six-prong chisel and die grinder create the swan’s outline.
Then the chainsaw crafts the silhouette, the most important step.
“You get the silhouette right, the rest is easier,” Leake said, snow shooting out from behind the chainsaw and puddling onto the cement outside the culinary arts classroom at Southwest Community College.
Leake, 56, is the owner of Premier Ice Sculptures, a business he operates out of the home he built on family land in Nesbit, a town in northern Mississippi. He’s one of the only ice sculptors in the Mid-south, and as the program coordinator for the culinary institute at Southwest Community College, he teaches an ice carving course at the school’s Macon Cove campus for three hours each week. Leake graduated from the program himself in 1988, when the school was known as State Technical Institute.
He watched someone carve for the first time at the Crowne Plaza (now the Downtown Sheraton) where he was a line cook. Outside, around the back of the hotel, he heard a chainsaw running.
“So being a country boy, I hear the chainsaw and I think, ‘Why are they cutting up wood?’” Leake said.
His chef was standing outside, a cigarette hanging off his lips while he stood holding the chainsaw next to a block of ice.
“Man, what are you doing?” Leake asked.
After 20 minutes, he saw the swan’s silhouette.
Deep notches in the ice block, called stop marks, are a guide for the chainsaw blade to know when to change course. The tight curves of the swan’s neck are tricky, but now Leake punches ice through the crevice with ease.
He adds detail work to the swan first with a six-prong chisel. The die grinder swipes at the ice in mini “U” shapes, forming eyes and the swan’s plumage.
Leake didn’t learn to carve at the Crowne Plaza, but did at his next position as a sous chef at the Hyatt Regency (now the Hilton in East Memphis).
“I can’t draw; I’m not artistically inclined,” Leake thought at the time. “I’m a little better now,” he concedes. He spent a month carving flower baskets. The design was easy enough to comprehend but, with its round edges, challenging to do well. The first attempt looked “like crap,” Leake said.
That didn’t stop his chef from setting it out for Sunday brunch.
It took four weeks before Leake felt good about the basket.
Next, he began to tackle swans and vases. Now, decades later, he’s much quicker and carving about 10 ice sculptures a month for his own company. Some are swans, but many are ice luges and company logos, made with the help of a CNC (computer numerical control) machine. It can precisely cut an ice block to the Fedex or Nike fonts, for instance, carvings Leake often embellishes with colored sand.
From catering company to ice carving
All the carving tools and containers of sand stay in Leake’s walk-in freezer at his home in Nesbit, which stays around 22 to 25 degrees. He began his own catering company while living in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife. His first event was for 500 people.
“I don’t know how I did that,” he said.
He and his wife bought a new house and moved, and the detached garage became his catering work space. Leake’s niche was to add in a $350 ice sculpture for free.
A few years later, they built the new house in Nesbit, where he now lives and works. Leake built his own catering kitchen into the floor plans, adding vent hoods, floor drains and the necessary gas and water lines.
“I really took off with catering then,” he said.
He now has a stand-alone walk-in freezer.
After 12 years of catering, in 2008, Leake shifted the company to just ice sculptures.
He also joined the faculty at Southwest in 2002 when the culinary program was low performing and at risk for closure. Leake improved the curriculum, lifting the program back to its feet. Though none of his students have become ice carvers, but many have become chefs, restaurant managers and entrepreneurs.
Earlier this year, Leake was recognized as a Dale P. Parnell Distinguished Faculty member, a national award given by the American Association of Community Colleges to 58 instructors across the country.
“He never fails to raise the bar in the classroom and to broaden his students’ outlook on their futures,” Southwest President Tracy D. Hall said via the media release. She said the award is no surprise given Leake’s commitments to his students and to his culinary crafts.
At one time, the chefs at major hotels were all ice carvers, Leake said. Skills were refined on the job. Though culinary schools teach carving, Leake estimates that students at Southwest probably carve more often and more challenging sculpture works than at most culinary schools.
“You go to hotels, very rarely do you see an ice carving up,” he said. “Whereas earlier in my career, every event that you went to had several ice carvings.”
The art is more rare now for a host of reasons: hotels used to foot the bills for the freezers and the $375 chainsaws, which aren’t much help without hours of carving practice. Demand though, is still there, Leake said. October to December, at the holidays, are the busiest months.
“Physically, (ice carving is) super challenging, right,” Leake said. “You’re constantly working on ice even though you’re not carving,” coming in to check the ice, see if it’s freezing the correct way and making sure the freezers are maintained well.
“It takes quite a bit of time to acquire the skill set, but it’s always evolving just like cooking is always evolving,” Leake said. “It’s never the same. There’s always some new things going on that you need to add to your repertoire.”
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino